With the development of computer hardware technology, sizes of computer devices get smaller and smaller while computation performance thereof is improved gradually. At present, mobile devices, such as smart phones, personal digital assistants, tablet computers and so on, can provide an increasingly strong data processing capability. In addition, as operating systems of mobile devices are perfected gradually, more and more applications have been developed for running on mobile devices. Mobile device users can download, either for free or for a fee, applications used for different operating systems (e.g., iOS (iPhone Operating System), Android Operating System or any other possible operating system).
Nowadays applications for running on mobile devices can provide more and more diversified functions, such as instant message communication, email sending and receiving, word processing, gaming, etc. Therefore, how to share data between these applications providing different functions becomes an issue.
A simple scenario of data sharing is that, for example, a user wants to forward a message that is received by an instant messaging application to a contact in the form of an email. At this point, typically, the user first opens the instant messaging application, finds a message to be forwarded, and performs a “copy” operation after selecting the message; afterwards, the user opens the email application, performs a “paste” operation in an email edit window and presses the “send” button, thereby fulfilling desired actions. It may be understood the user has to manually perform a series of operations such as opening, selecting, copying, opening, pasting and sending. Therefore, how to share data between applications conveniently and rapidly becomes a problem.